10 March 2019

Like the rest of the world, I watched the events that unfolded in Toronto in April of 2018.

“There has been worldwide amazement that Toronto Police did not shoot the suspect in Monday’s vehicular attack.

He had left a street strewn with bodies and was wielding an object that he claimed was a firearm. Nevertheless, Const. Ken Lam not only arrested him without using lethal force, but did it without waiting for backup.

Seven months ago, when a 30-year-old man perpetrated a similar vehicular attack in downtown Edmonton — which injured four, in addition to the stabbing of a police officer — he too was apprehended without a single shot being fired.

Both events speak to a pattern: Canadian police are very good at not shooting people.

“Policing in Canada is not policing in America … the police in Canada use force with incredible infrequency,” said Joel Johnston, a veteran Vancouver Police officer and former use-of-force co-ordinator for the province of British Columbia.

The statistics back this up: The rate of police shooting in Canada is 11 times lower than in the U.S.

Another account of the incident in Toronto of April 2018: “From the video, it appears the suspect was yelling for the police officer to shoot him. He dropped his arm to his side and brought it back up again as if pointing a weapon at the police officer. Again, it was not a typical shooting stance. This officer clearly had de-escalation in mind. He recognized his car siren was on and went back to turn it off. This shows that he did not have tunnel vision or hearing. With the siren off, clearer communications were possible.

With a good visual of the subject, the actions of the suspect, his calls to be shot and the artificial manner in which he was standing and threatening, the police officer clearly made a decision that the use of deadly force, while authorized, was not immediately needed.”

This story fascinated me and brought up a lot of questions. Why are Canadian police so good at not shooting people? So, when I was interviewing Darren Laur, a 30 year veteran of the Victoria police force, I asked him why Canadian police are so good at not shooting people.

His answer surprised me: “My best weapon is tongue-fu”

“If I can get them to talk, in most cases I can get them to walk,” says Darren. “Unfortunately in some rare cases officers may have to resort to using deadly force to protect themselves and/or other form death or grievous bodily injury. However, what makes Canadian policing stand out is our humanistic approach. I spent most of my career in the downtown city core of Victoria where I built rapport so I could de-escalate situations.”

Instead of looking at the rougher inhabitants of the street as potential problems, he always saw them as people. Darren explains, “I have never met a drug addict who said ‘I want to be a drug addict for the rest of my life.’ They all got there somehow and I like to get to know them.” This is the core of the humanistic approach: everyone was once young and full of dreams. They got to where they are by taking a path they hadn’t envisioned.

There are a few interesting facts about the Canadian police that also help explain some differences from the police force in the United Staes. First, the “biggest difference between American and Canadian police is that Canadian police enact the single Canadian federal criminal code, whereas in the United States different states have their own criminal code, which in some cases differs from the American federal criminal code. In Canada the enforcement of the federal criminal code is the same throughout all provinces and territories. Therefore police training, police practices, and investigative policies are standardized regardless of a police officer’s location in the country.”

Finally, police in Canada are public servants and “Americans are used to hearing about a "police force" being called out to deal with an emergency, catch a robber or track a suspect. Canadians, however, are protected by a "police service."

Perhaps the best summary of what happened was the now famous tweet by Inspector Chris Boddy of the Toronto Police:

08 February 2019

I do not write non-fiction often. The current issue of the Southern States Police Benevolent Association, BLUE REVIEW (Issue 12) has my article THE WRITER COP. Thought I would share a portion of it here.

THE WRITER COP

There are advantages and disadvantages of being a cop-turned-writer

Advantages

We know the life. We know how a police officer thinks, how a cop talks, what a cop will do and we write from there. We are eye-witnesses who must learn how to write good fiction to get the stories out there. So, we start a little ahead but until we learn how to write, all we have are anecdotes.

Disadvantages
It is hard for us to cut corners in our fiction, just as in real life. We have to solve the crimes as real cops do and sometimes it isn't interesting. That's why learning to be a good fiction writer is paramount. We have to know how to add excitement to mundane procedures. The dean of our field, Joseph Wambaugh, taught us this lesson we should never forget.

Another disadvantage is publishing's perception of police officers in fiction. Some agents and editors think television cops are real, that cops beat up prisoners all the time, violate people's rights, shoot everyone they can. Real cops like that end up in a penitentiary. Then again, a good story outranks reality. We are writing fiction, so when I read about a cop who is over the top, well that's fiction. It's just a little harder for us to write that way. We need to learn how to do this effectively. My recurring character John Raven Beau is larger than life and has shot far too many people in my fiction. It took a while, but I learned.

We cop writers must remember the basics

A Good Plot is the backbone of the police story
A well-plotted scenario will allow the writer to create memorable characters, unforgettable scenes, uniquely described settings; so long as the writer does not forget normal police procedures. Deviation from the norm removes credibility from your story. Strive for believability.

Keep it Action Oriented
Although real police investigations include long, sometimes grueling days of unending canvasses, surveillances, and dead-end leads, you should be selective in what you present the reader in order to keep your story moving forward. Short scenes featuring crisp dialogue can streamline the most mundane parts of an investigation. Leave out the boring parts.

Create well-rounded characters
As in almost all fiction, character is the heart of the story. Although the hero of the police procedural is usually a police officer, they are real people existing in a familiar world. What happens to them can be extraordinary.

Create a distinctive setting
The setting is the skeleton your story is built around. It is more than just the description of a place or time period. It is the feeling of the place and time. Give the reader a distinct, well-rounded setting stressing sensory details – the sharp smell of gunpowder, the coppery taste of blood, the tacky feel of rubber grips on a weapon when the hero's hand are sweaty.

Accurate language adds credibility
Through dialogue, you have an excellent opportunity to create emotion, from scintillating nails-on-a-blackboard passes uttered by creepy villians to hard-nosed talk between overworked detectives. Use what you know. You know how a cop talks.

Be Realistic
Make sure of your facts. We all know revolvers do not have safeties nor can a silencer be effective with a revolver or any open-breech weapon. Detectives take notes. How many times have you seen a movie or read a book showing detectives taking notes? Not many. I've been a detective most of my career. I never shot anyone but I killed a lot of pens. A pen is a detective's most useful took and mightiest weapon. Every killer on death row began his or her long trek through the criminal justice system with a detective taking notes at a crime scene.

A definite resolution helps
Don't cheat the reader out of an ending to your story. Police cases end, usually with an arrest and trial, sometimes with a shootout. This is a natural, climactic event. Even cases that are suspended or closed without a solution have a climactic moment, when the investigators face the nightmare of someone getting away with murder. In your resolution, you should remember something is usually affirmed. Good triumphs over evil, or at least goes the distance.

18 January 2019

The cover story of the Fraternal Order of Police Journal's December 2018 Issue is entitled PUBLIC SITES UNDER ATTACK: TACTICS FOR SECURING LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES, ENTERTAINMENT VENUES AND MORE.

Interesting piece. Good stuff for a writer to know as it details changing police tactics and techniques to mitigate threats to the law enforcement officers and the public. Since nothing is off limits to terrorists, the vulnerability of people in public places is addressed as well as protection of police stations.

Obviously police officers must remain on alert to any threat. One way is ongoing training. When I was a university police officer, we trained repeatedly on how to handle emergencies on campus, from fire to natural disaster (we were in hurricane alley) to active shooter on campus. Every semester break, we conducted a mock attack on different buildings to keep our home-field advantage. We studied every area of campus.

Training is paramount. As is quick reaction. The men and women I worked with were fearless. In the few events we had on campus (all turned out to be false alarms – a student accused of pulling a gun on another actually pulled out a cell phone), the rapid response of our officers was impressive.

One observation by the trainers - old school cops like me and others, while we moved a little slower, were quicker to react decisively. Comes from working big city streets, I suppose.

28 September 2018

I honestly believe—that the crime novel is where the social novel went. If you want to write about the underbelly of America, if you want to write about the second America that nobody wants to look at, you turn to the crime novel. That's the place to go. --Dennis Lehane, from an interview at Powells.com

I agree with Mr Lehane and it is one of the reasons I chose crime fiction as the method to tell my stories. That and realizing that I wasn't finding stories about my family or the people I knew in "literary" fiction, except on rare occasions.
I don't think you can write about crime without staking your position on many social issues. Even if you don't comment on them directly, you are affirming the status quo in one way or another--stating that "all is well" or "what ya gonna do, that's the way things are." Even the definition of crime is a social issue statement. At Bouchercon, I attended the criminals in fiction panel, and during the Q&A I asked, "How do you define a criminal?"

I asked the question because first of all, actual questions are rare at any writer panel. Most of the time they are manifestos or statements twisted into the form of a question, such as "the unpublished novel about my pet squirrel's ghost solving crimes would be bigger than The DaVinci Code, don't you agree?" So I wanted to give the writers something to chew on, but unfortunately I didn't get any good answers.

One writer used the legal definition, which means anyone never charged with a crime--either because they eluded police or their status and privilege acted as a Get Out of Jail Free card--isn't a "criminal." Which makes no sense at all. Jack the Ripper isn't a criminal, he was never caught. Is someone who is pardoned a criminal? Are you a criminal for life if you've done your time, but an upstanding citizen if you've been acquitted because your victims signed NDAs or disappeared? Our heroic protagonists often break dozens of laws, but they're okay. The most popular genre today, superheroes, act as vigilantes, above the law either by government sanction or their own moral code, and we cheer them on. They are criminals.

As for Get Out of Jail Free cards, police unions give out paper or gold cards to their members to give to friends and family for preferential treatment, and badges to put on windshields to avoid traffic stops, so I guess anyone who's good friends with an American police officer is unlikely to be a criminal by the legal definition, "just don't kill anybody," one recipient was told. We permit this and think it won't lead to abuse. I'm sure the strict moral codes of all involved come into play.

People from the "underbelly of society" as Lehane calls it don't get these too often, they are the hidden tax base that American municipalities leech for revenue, keeping them in a cycle of probation to give jobs to our bloated drug-war-fueled criminal injustice system, but whenever I read about corruption it's about a few "bad apples" like the guys in Don Winslow's The Force. We always forget the other half of that adage: they spoil the whole bunch. I know that's sacrilege these days, saying that our warrior caste of Heroes are complicit in a corrupt system and anyone who says "I hate bad cops! They make my job harder!" but can't produce a list of cops they got jailed for corruption is helping rot the barrel, but yes, that's what I'm saying. And when we write stories about police that ignore that unarmed black men are shot in their homes and turned into criminals, that prosecutors withhold evidence to make their cases, that judges take kickbacks to send kids to private prisons, we are the bad apples, too. Oh, that's unpleasant? That can't be entertainment? The fantasy section is over there.

Am I without sin? Hardly. I've been that cowardly guy who chuckled nervously when a man with power over me said something terrible about women and confessed to mistreating them. It's the same thing. We perpetuate it. It's our problem, not women's. I've tried to do better. I've helped train police to constrain violent people without having to shoot them, tase them, or choke them to death for selling cigarettes. I've tried to write that whether you wear blue uniforms or prison sweatpants, that you are human and have your reasons for what you do, whether those reasons are for the greater good or for personal gain, and make it entertaining in the process. They are not mutually exclusive. If you think they are, take it up with Lehane, Hammett, Hughes, Himes, Chandler, Paretsky, Mosley, and Block--who gave us openly corrupt cops in both Scudder and his cozy Burglar series.

The young bloods in crime fiction are not shoving "social issues" down your throat. It has been the crux since Hammett "took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley," as Chandler said. Even cozies today take on social issues. It is in crime fiction's DNA. Maybe we don't quote scripture, maybe we prefer Lil Wayne. He's sold 100 million albums, do you know who he is? Big as George Harrison (RIP, my favorite of the fab four). If you think "kids today" are stupid when they are the most active young generation in politics since the late '60s because you saw some edited crap on the Jay Leno show, my suggestion is to get out more. Take your head out of the Venetian vase and put it on the streets.

Thanks for listening to this rant. It will be my last for SleuthSayers. Thank you to Robert and Leigh for letting me speak here, and for all of you for reading and commenting.
Fare well.

30 March 2018

It's time to anger family and friends again. Y'all won't believe how much flak I've caught since my anti-confederate blog last year.

I want to talk about police officers blindly following orders.

I'm a retired law enforcement officer, been a cop most of my life, from the 1960s until 2017, with a few breaks in between. I've been in law enforcement from the anti-war and civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s to todays demonstrations for black-lives-matter and immigration reform and me-too and women's rights and so much more. Those causes are not the subject of this discussion. How cops handle them is.

When did police officers start acting like Nazi brown-shirts, jack-booted thugs? Well, since forever. Police officers were used to break up demonstrations for unions, women's suffrage, veterans rights, anti-war, the list goes on and on. Just finished reading Ken Follett's FALL OF GIANTS where British police sided with pro-Nazi English fascists (The British Union of Fascists) and attacked people blocking the Nazis from marching in their neighborhood in 1936.

Here are photos of British police attacking demonstrators at that particular demonstrations, commonly called The Battle of Cable Street.

In the name of law and order, the police were ordered to side with Nazis and followed orders.

Here are photos of suffragettes beaten by police. How in the hell did men beat women with clubs because women wanted to vote? How? Because they were sent to do that in the name of law and order and they obeyed orders.

This may be repugnant today. How about this image from the University of California Davis in 2011?

I was a university police officer then and has discussions with my fellow officers about this. I said, "You don't want to be that guy." And several fellow offieer said they wanted to be that guy. If the university administration (as in California) ordered university police to use force against demonstrators, they'd pepper stray students without hesitation.

I tried to give them some old-man wisdom, reminding them we were talking about students, about young people we were paid to protect. What do we tell their parents? We attacked them because they made things inconvenient on campus, they blocked a walkway? If they blocked a walkway, go another way.

I told them how New Orleans Mayor Ernest 'Dutch' Morial's office was once taken over by demonstrators. Did the mayor call in police to remove them? No. He moved his operations to a different office in city hall and negotiated with the demonstrators to a peaceful solution. Morial knew the score. He'd been a civil rights demonstrator as a young man.

"But we can't let them just stay there." Going back to my discussions with fellow university police officers.

"Yes we can," was my response. We're talking about American kids. They'll need to eat, go to the bathroom, take a shower. They'll need to recharge their cell phones. They don't live on the ground. This is Louisiana. It'll rain soon. They'll get weary and go home. Just wait them out. Be nice to them. Converse with them. Protect them from anti-demonstrators and it'll all calm down. Let them demonstrate.

Stephen Stills, in his enlightened song FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, wrote of demonstrators, "A thousand people in the street. Singing songs and carrying signs. Mostly saying, 'Hooray for our side'."

Let them voice their concerns. Police officers need not agree or disagree with the message. It's not our job to solve the issue. We maintian the peace and we should not attack either side. You don't want to be that guy.

How about this image from Baton Rouge, Louisiana? Just following orders.

Whose message is more powerful? Heavily armed men in body armor or peaceful demonstrator?

16 June 2017

Shell shock is what they called it during the wars of the 20th Century when combatants who survived shelling suffered serious psychological effects. Today it is called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We all know it effects police officers and other first responders as well. It comes in many shades.

When I was a homicide detective We experienced what we call 'the purple side of blue' - a bruising of a police officer's psyche after repetitive exposure to extreme violence perpetrated on others. It effects police officers and their families. It is another brutal, lingering residue of the job.

I cannot even list all the horrendous things we witnessed - from infants beaten to death to children shot in drive-by shootings to stabbings to mass killings. It cannot be forgotten. Some try to numb the effects with alcohol or sex or whatever. It makes officers vengeful and their families stunned as the officer morphs from the smiling rookie who came out of the academy with visions of saving lives and catching criminals into a sulking individual with demons crawling inside their mind, reminding them of what they've witnessed. Again. And again.

Every cop I know who has been in law enforcement a while suffers the purple side of blue. Every one. Some more than others.

I've written about the subject, illustrating it in my police procedurals, rather than telling about it. Probably why my most realistic homicide novel, GRIM REAPER, has the word 'fuck' in it 344 times in a 208 page book. You see, on my first day as a homicide detective, my partner Marco Nuzzolillo (best detective I ever worked with) took me to witness 10 autopsies of murder victims. From that bloody day, I worked case after case where a human died at the hands of another human.

Not long ago, I was asked by a deer-hunter friend if I was a hunter.
"I used to be."
"Did you hunt deer?"
"No. I hunted humans."
Pause.
"I hunted humans who killed humans."

I am old now and have an excellent memory. I recall, with unfailing clarity my childhood days weilding wooden swords made by my father as we were the knights of the round table, days swimming in Lake Garda, nights chasing lightning bugs, getting into watermelon fights, looking at girls differently as I grew up, wondering why I noticed their lips and the flow of long hair and their smooth jawline and soft necks. I recall every broken heart, every scintillating thrill of love, recall the births of my children. I remember the bad times too, the failures in life we all experience, but we concentrate on the good times, don't we?

Sometimes, in the middle of remembering a day at the old zoo with a pretty girl, I can see her face and the beauty of that summer day and how I felt. Then I get a tap on my shoulder and turn to see it is nighttime and the bodies of two teen-aged girls lie next to the muddy Mississippi, their hands tied behind them, bullet holes in the back of their heads and I see their autopsies in flashes. I remember brushing a finger over their wrists, touching them, connecting with them, secretly telling each who I was. I was the man who was going to catch who did this.

My partners and I solved that murder case. Took 13 months, but we did. Closure? Not for me. I still see those young, dead faces under the harsh light in the autopsy room. Snapshots of carnage. Closure? Yeah. Right.

A better writer once wrote:
"Never send to know for whom the bells tolls; It tolls for thee." John Donne

Damn, this article is depressing. It is a wonder we can stand it all. Maybe that is what makes us human. We can stand anything.

15 March 2017

This is the fourth in my exceedingly occasional series of reviews of nonfiction books of interest to mystery readers and writers. These two have nothing in common except excellence.The Job by Steve Osborne. Steve Osborne was a New York City cop for more than twenty years. One day, after his retirement, he was invited to speak at a Moth event. For those of you not in the know, The Moth is a radio show on NPR (also available as a podcast). They record live events where people tell true stories, and pick the best ones for airplay.

Osborne had twenty-four hours to prepare his telling and was shocked to find hundreds of people in the audience. ("I would rather have chased a guy with a gun down a dark alley than get up on that stage.") But he did and it was a hit and he appeared many times more on the show.

Which resulted in The Job, a collection of essays about life as a cop. It is full of crazy incidents and fascinating details. Take this example, which happens to be from the very story that got him started on The Moth.

Normally most cops don't like hanging around where you work because if you're active, meaning you make a lot of arrests, guys get out of jail and don't necessarily have fond memories of you. You don't want to have to deal with them when you're off duty, especially when you're with someone you care about, like a girlfriend. It's not that you're scared of these guys, it's just that you have better things to do with your free time than getting into an off-duty confrontation.

This particular story is about a convict who does have fond memories of being arrested, much to Osborne's astonishment.

Another tale I liked was about the city's obsession with keeping squatters out of Tompkins Square Park which resulted in one cop car patrolling the inside of the locked park every night while a sergeant in another car circled the outside.

Osborne worked for some time in Anti-Crime which he described as the best or most-active cops in any precinct.

Our job is to go out and hunt. And it is like hunting - very much so. All night long we ride around searching for bad guys who are looking to commit a crime. Our job is to find them before they commit the act, and be there when the crime happens.

The most powerful part of the book occurs when Osborne is on the Bronx Warrant Squad and goes, with his crew, to locate and arrest a gang member. They find the fugitive's motherwho tells them her son is dead. What happens next is a tiny shred of shared humanity than any novelist would have been proud to dream up.

The Aleppo Codex by Matti Friedman. A "codex" is simply a book-shaped book, as opposed to a book in the form of a scroll. In synagogues Bible texts are always read from scrolls, but the synagogue in Aleppo, Syria, was the home for hundreds of years to a codex, written by hand more than 1,100 years ago. Known as the Crown of Aleppo it contained not only the books of the Hebrew Bible (more or less what Christians call the Old Testament), but also annotations on how the vowel-less words were to be pronounced, and exactly how the text was to be written out. It is the ur-text from which a millenium of scribes have reproduced the sacred books. Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher, had that very copy on his desk when he was writing his book on Jewish law.

The Aleppo synagogue was destroyed during the riots in 1947 after the UN vote that paved the way for the creation of the state of Israel. The Codex - or most of it - survived the catastrophe and eventually made it to Israel.

All well and good, you might say, but what does this have to do with crime writing? Never fear; I will offer you tales from three different genres.

Spy thriller. In order to protect it, the Jewish community of Aleppo spread the word that the Codex was destroyed in the fire. Years later they arranged for a cheese merchant to smuggle it into Turkey, wrapped in cheese cloth, inside a washing machine. An Israeli agent then got the merchant, his family, and the treasured text into Israel.

Courtroom drama. The cheese merchant gave the Codex to a government official, much to the shock of the Syrian Jews in Israel who felt it belonged to them. Understand that I am wildly oversimplifying, but in those early days many Israeli officials, who were from the European side of the family, considered the Oriental (i.e. Middle Eastern) branch to be quaint and primitive. The president of the state (a major player in the Codex story) referred to "the most backward Jewish tribes, whose cultural possessions have no responsible curator."

Naturally the Syrian Jews who had successfully curated the Codex for hundreds of years went to court to get it back. Matti Friedman, the author of this book, uncovered the partial transcripts of the trial which, frankly, don't make the government officials look good.

Theft. The official story is that most of the first five books of the Codex (The Torah or Pentateuch, the most vital part of the Bible to any Jew) were destroyed in the synagogue fire, but Friedman builds a solid piece-by-piece case that the majority of those pages were in tact when they arrived in the care of an Israeli institute. A few years later they had vanished.

And things get messier. Consider the death of a rare book dealer two years after he allegedly offered to sell most of the missing pages to a collector for a million dollars:

The case was never solved. Officially, in fact, there was no case, as the Hasid had died of a heart attack, in a hotel room that happened to have been rented by someone using an alias, who then disappeared without a trace.

11 June 2015

Police and politics have been in the news here in Cincinnati in recent weeks. We've been spared the latest round of shootings followed by riots that seems to have overtaken other cities. (Twice in the case of Cleveland, just four hours north of here.) But other problems have arisen.

Our police chief is a man named Jeffery Blackwell, who came to the Queen City from Columbus. Blackwell was named near the end of the previous mayor's term. Three weeks ago, it became news that the Chief would resign after two years on the job, then changed his mind. Despite denials from Blackwell, Mayor John Cranley, and other officials, stories of discord between city hall and the police department are rampant. Then this week, in the wake of a rash of shootings in the Avondale neighborhood, the city demanded Blackwell come up with a 90-day plan to reduce violence. I've seen this before.

It was a recurring theme on The Wire.

To recap, David Simon's Baltimore had a police department hamstrung by senior officers jockeying for position to become the next commissioner. Division captains and lieutenants found themselves terrorized by promotion-minded assistant chiefs at "comstat" meetings, where they had to explain why the crime rate was so high and what they planned to do about it. Never mind that the criminals causing all the trouble had to cooperate. Many of the plans and the personnel moves were tied to politics. Watching the news, I can't help but notice that so are the real-life moves in Cincinnati.

For starters, the increased crime in Avondale, while horrifying, belies a crime rate lower than in past years. There have been increased shootings on the West Side as well, but they make the news as individual incidents, not as a sudden spike in gun crime in one part of the city. But Avondale is two neighborhoods away from downtown and Over-the-Rhine, far enough out to spare the business district and the gentrifying neighborhood to the north of it, but close enough to the stadium to spook city leaders. Why are they spooked?

The All Star Game is coming in a couple of weeks. And so, with the local stations harping on Avondale's rise in shootings, city leaders have turned to that time-tested means of looking like they're on the job: Tell the police to do something, dammit. So Chief Blackwell was given a week to solve a problem that has been building since last year.

Sound like The Wire?

Then we have the hostility between city hall and the CPD. Chief Blackwell replaced James Craig, who left to take over the police department in his native Detroit. However, Blackwell started shortly before the last mayoral election, which means Mayor Cranley did not have a hand in choosing the chief. The current city manager also did not have a hand in the decision. One has to wonder if the administration's need to put its stamp on the police department is outweighing the need for stable leadership in the CPD.

That is speculation, of course, but every time Chief Blackwell, Mayor Cranley, or some council member opens their mouth now, I can't help but think back to Mayors Royce and Carcetti ripping some hapless commissioner a new one on The Wire. Cincinnati does not have all of Baltimore 's problems. If anything, we manage our police-race relation issues better than cities that looked at us funny during the 2001 riots. But when politicians fall all over themselves on the eve of a major sporting event, I can't help but wonder if life is imitating art. It wouldn't surprise me. Some of the cops and criminals depicted on The Wire were also writers and actors on the show.

19 May 2015

A lot of attention lately has been focused on police lately. And why not? Unarmed people die in confrontations, it brings up a lot of uncomfortable questions about training and race and whether police departments are getting too militaristic. But this past week, I got an up-close-and-personal look at what police officers face on a daily basis.

About ten days ago, my wife and I went out of town for the night. It was the first time we'd left our boy home by himself. He's gone off on his own overnight, even flying back from Germany on his own at the age of 16, but for some reason, in 20 years, he'd never had the house to himself for more than an evening. On our way to our destination, my wife says, "What if he throws a party, gets the police called, and mouths off?" AJ is at that age where he knows the law better than his parents or even the cops. And you can't argue with him because, unlike me or his mother at 20-21, he has the Internet on his side.

So last week, I get a knock at the door. Sure enough, Friday night while we were gone, AJ's friends made a lot of noise - though only enough, apparently, to rile up that one nosy neighbor on everyone's street. The couple across the street and the elderly couple next door had no clue there was even a party - and the deputies arrived to quiet things down. And AJ showed off his legal knowledge.

And the deputy came by to let us know. The deputy is about my age with a kid about AJ's age, so he knew all about attitude. We got a good laugh out of it, and AJ's attitude toward the police has softened somewhat in the past week or so.

But it makes me think of my own interactions with police over the years. The closest I've ever come to being arrested was when I went on a job interview only to find out I was doing drive-by sales. You barge into a business and sell junk to whoever will buy just to get you out. Only Middletown, Ohio, is not the friendliest city to solicitors, and we had the cops called on us. So when they asked if I was interested in this job, I said no. If I wanted to deal with the cops, I'd just keep the driving habits I had since I was 16.

And because I was young and stupid behind the wheel, I dealt with a lot of cops. Very quickly, I learned that, if you handed a cop your license and registration (or now insurance papers), things go a lot more smoothly. Why mouth off? You know you were doing 80 in school zone. Suck it up, buttercup, and pay the fine. You also find that, if you're not an ass when you're pulled over, the offense on the ticket somehow goes down.

Sometimes.

I have mouthed off to a couple of cops. Once, when I was really young, I made it a point to taunt one who worked for an obvious speed trap. My view? He ticketed a friend of mine for doing 60 when he only did 42. I know. I was in the van when he got the ticket. So I would drive 5 miles under the speed limit all the way through that township with this cop on my bumper, then jack it up to 70 after I crossed the township line and he'd turned around. Stupid? Absolutely. It got to the point where I took the long way home to avoid an almost certain trip to the county jail. That was all me. Right or wrong, the last thing anyone needs to do is taunt a cop. Even if their employer exists primarily to collect speeding tickets, their primary job is to deal with bad people. And while I thought I was being funny, I was probably being a bad person.

Another time, shortly after I moved to Cincinnati, I had to explain to an officer from a nearby suburb that, just because he was sitting inside the 35 mph zone when he clocked me doing, did not change the fact that the speed limit where I accelerated was 50. We went round and round for about five minutes before he realized that, yes, I was under the speed where I was when he clocked me.

That was an honest disagreement. I did not raise my voice or give him a hard time. I handed him my license and my insurance.

Since then, I've had unusual interactions with cops. Once, while listening to a Final Four game during my pizza delivery days, I got pulled over for driving 45 through a park. Kentucky was playing, this being the Tubby Smith era. The Cincinnati cop who pulled me over came up to me, knowing me when as one of the pizza dudes, strolled up filling out the ticket with a look of disappointment on his face. I rolled down the window with my license and insurance card out. He heard the game on my radio.

"Who's winning?" he said.

"UK," I said, meaning Kentucky.

He disappeared back into his cruiser. Two minutes later, he shoved a warning through my window. "Here's a warning. Slow down. Go 'Cats."

Sure, things are bad out there. Just look at Ferguson. (And somebody explain to me why a speed trap like that has heavy artillery with a force that makes Barney Fife look like the cops on Law & Order?) But it helps when at least one side doesn't lose their cool. My conflict with the small town cop when I lived in Cleveland? I'm damned lucky I didn't end up in jail. With the suburban cop? Well, I'm sure he wasn't happy with that traffic stop, but it wasn't a big deal. I got off because I wasn't an ass.

04 November 2014

by David Dean
Occasionally, a case so strange, so baffling, so unusual that it defies easy description, arrives on the police blotter. The following is such a case:

I found myself one early August morning in 2008 standing on a north-end beach of Avalon, NJ with the mayor. He was not a happy man, and as a result of this, and the sorry mess I was there to witness, I found my own spirits drooping beneath the mercilessly revealing rays of the rising sun. We were looking at several acres of medical waste festooning our once pristine beaches...and there were weeks yet remaining of the tourist season--the Labor Day weekend looming as its climax.

This was a scene we had both witnessed a number of times in the past, being something of a Jersey Shore epidemic in the late eighties. We both also believed that the source of this plague had been successfully squelched years before. It had been two decades since we had seen the likes of this. It didn't bode well for the town. If you know anything about the economics of beach resorts in the northeast, you know that the season is short. There are but a few months for the townspeople and its shopkeepers to make a year's worth of money. Every day counts. And if you know anything about medical waste dumping at sea, you know it takes several days for everything to wash up; sometimes longer, with the media gleefully documenting every syringe-laden tide. If it helps, call to mind the scene from the movie "Jaws" where the mayor and Chief are standing in front of the billboard. Remember the bikini-clad gal splashing along on her raft, while the vandal has added a crude depiction of a huge dorsal fin cutting through the waves toward her. This was such a moment for us--we had just met our shark and he was eating our beach.

Unlike the fictional mayor of Amity, however, our mayor had wasted no time in attacking the situation, having gathered volunteer firemen, lifeguards, and borough workers to begin the clean-up. This was being accomplished under the guidance of our equally able Emergency Management Director and investigators from the NJ Attorney General's Environmental Crimes Bureau. One of my detectives was documenting the scene. We were treating it as a crime...which it most certainly was. But it wasn't the detective, or yours truly, that first noticed that something was different about this particular wash-up--it was the mayor. "Why's it only in this area?" he asked. Or words to that effect.

It took me a moment to grasp what he was getting at--we were looking at a fairly concentrated area covering what would be a few city blocks. In the past, such spills were sometimes spread over miles. A beach vehicle was dispatched to drive south along the shore to search for more wash-up. His report was negative. Then a boat was sent out to try and determine how far out the slick reached. It was a few hundred yards at most.
﻿

﻿

In case you're wondering at the significance of these observations, let me explain. Our previous dealings with illegal dumping had taught us that mostly it was accomplished far out in the shipping channels, and nowhere near shore. Usually the deed was done from barges being used in the illegal trade of unauthorized medical waste disposal by companies that were lucrative fronts for organized crime families and organizations. Generally, the material could be traced to medical facilities in New York City and its environs. When investigators showed up, such fronts, and their employees, vanished like chlorine gas, invisible and toxic. The practical result of their dumping efforts, however, would spread over many miles as the tide and currents moved them inexorably shoreward. This was not what we were seeing. This mess had started within sight of the beach. This was local, and the joyous scent of prey was suddenly very near.

The waste material itself proved equally unusual. When one of the investigators from the ECB showed us some of the gathered items, we were all baffled. They were unquestionably of a medical nature, but nothing that we had come to associate with these events. There were syringes, but of a type we'd never seen, lots of small cottony swabs, but no bandages, hundreds of small capsules containing some kind of unidentifiable material. Even the ECB boys (who had been to sites all over the state) were flummoxed. My detective took some of the evidence back to the station to begin researching it over the internet. It didn't take long. This wasn't material from a hospital or clinic--this was waste from a dental practice. Someone who not only was familiar with the area, but who must have piloted a boat to accomplish this incomprehensible crime. In my view, as well as others, someone who was close. During the following two days less and less material washed ashore. By the fourth day it had ceased altogether. Only the very north end had been affected by the beach closings, though the publicity hadn't done the town any favors. Still, it could have been worse.

As the buckets of material were sifted through, object by object, painstakingly photographed and recorded, the first really significant clue was discovered--a dental drill bit with its wrapper miraculously intact. We had a lot number and a manufacturer.

Then, like a dank, chill wind issuing forth from the cavern of the troll king, a summons was received from the county prosecutor to attend a strategy meeting at his offices. As the head law enforcement officer for the county this was his prerogative. While understanding it, I was also a little curious as to why. From where I was sitting, our unfortunate situation had no ramifications beyond my own jurisdiction. There had been no other instances at any other shore towns in the county. Normally, as chief, I would have remained behind, leaving such meetings to my detectives. But my antennae had detected a disturbance in the Force, and I decided to attend, as well. It was good that I did.

Seated around a huge oval table in the prosecutor's conference room were myself, my detective, the two ECB investigators, the prosecutor and his chief detective, and two investigators that worked for him. My detective laid out our findings. The ECB boys nodded in agreement. The prosecutor's crew...scoffed. A couple of hypodermic needles had washed ashore in a town north of us. They had seen this all before. This was just your usual off-shore dumping, and its effects would show up on other beaches in other towns sooner, rather than later. A local event, indeed!

It was clear that the publicity attendant to our unfortunate situation had gained the prosecutor's attention. Seeing how my department was working with the state AG's environmental investigators (and she was the prosecutor's boss), he wanted in.

It was also obvious that the syringes in Ocean City were a few insulin needles and did not remotely resemble ours. I took umbrage. Not with the prosecutor's rights, or even his motives, but with their sneering condescension. Umbrage is something I've taken a few times both before, during, and after being a chief of police. Umbrage means that I clench my teeth, hear bells ringing too loudly, and think dark and bloody thoughts. Entering the fray, I politely, but forcefully, disagreed, outlining my own extensive experience with these very things; carefully explaining so that even those challenged by their own overblown, and totally unrealistic, high opinions of themselves could understand; making sure to prick the swollen balloons of their egos with the sharp needle of reason and objectivity. After the long silence that followed, the prosecutor agreed that we should be allowed to continue our futile line of investigation. He even agreed that a reward should be offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible. I felt this would bring heat on our perpetrator, wherever he was, as well as the promise that we now had, courtesy of the drill bit maker, a very manageable list of dentist offices that had purchased the lot number recovered from our beach. I could see no reason not to put this out there for him to hear and sweat. We promised to stay in touch and left that dark, unhappy, place.

My plan did not take long to bear fruit. On September 2, even as my detectives were making their way through the list of dental practices that ran from Jersey to the Philadelphia Main Line, a stranger presented himself in the lobby. He wished to speak with an officer. Before the day was over, a 59 year old dentist from Pa. had confessed to the illegal dumping of approximately 300 "Accuject" dental-type needles, 180 cotton swabs, and a number of plastic capsules containing filling material, as well as other items. A search warrant executed at his home and practice revealed evidence that corroborated his confession and he was subsequently charged.

A few days later, the county prosecutor hosted a press conference lauding the arrest and the excellent cooperation between agencies that led to it. His boss, the Attorney General, was in attendance for his big moment. I was allowed a few words. When asked by a reporter how I felt about the arrest, I smiled and said, "I could not be happier. I feel like Chief Brody when he got the shark."

The strange dentist never offered a motive for what he did, and to this day, I sometimes find myself wondering why. Medical waste disposal for the average dental office at that time cost about 700 dollars a year. It couldn't have been the money.

It had been twenty years since anyone had been arrested for illegally dumping medical waste in New Jersey ocean waters.

02 September 2014

The subject of this blog was suggested by a Facebook posting of our SleuthSayers brother, Rob Lopresti, in which he published a quote regarding the difficulty of arresting a naked woman. I responded that I could testify to the truth of this statement; various witticisms were exchanged as you might imagine. However, as a result, I warned Rob that he had planted the germ of an idea in my near-arid brain for an upcoming article. I can picture his rather distinguished brows rising in alarm when he sees this title; Rob's thinking running along the lines of, "No...he didn't...he's not really going to write about...poor, needy bastard, so desperate for readers that he stoops to this--a literary sidewalk barker for imaginary lap dancers. Pitiful!"

Sadly, Rob would be correct if these were his thoughts, at least the part about being desperate for readers. Of course I'm desperate, Rob! For God's sake I'm a writer! However, I wish to set everyone's minds to rest about the following content: I have rated it R for mature, though in some sections it is I for the opposite.

There comes into the life of every police officer (sooner or later; rarely or often) the naked suspect. This is not a subject extensively covered (stop snickering), if at all, in the police academies of our nation. Mostly, they arrive unannounced and unexpected, much like Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" Well, the police rarely expect the naked suspect. You may wonder how professional police officers, like myself, know when a naked person is a suspect. The answer to this is generally straightforward--when they are naked. Once a naked person is spotted in a public venue, the police go on high alert--this is not normal behavior. There are many motives, causes, and M.O.'s, ranging from youthful hi-jinks and drunkenness, to drug-induced euphoria and psychosis. On a much more serious note, sometimes they are not suspects at all, but victims, but I will not be addressing this aspect in what I intend to be more light-hearted blog.

I can offer several personal examples of encounters with the naked suspect: It would sometimes happen during a busy summer night at the Jersey Shore, that a naked person, like the proverbial deer, would appear suddenly in the headlights of our marked unit. Sometime a herd of them. It was equally possible, though much more rare, for it to occur during daylight hours, as well.

Making a sweep of the beach in the wee hours before dawn might also reveal people who, through a series of events seemingly beyond their control, had also divested themselves of all clothing. It appears that, for some, the salubrious sea air loosened the shackles of convention, rendering clothing irrelevant.

Typically, our reaction to such phenomenon was not as enthusiastic as one might expect. Think about it--is there any dignity left to the officer who arrests the naked suspect? I think you may know the answer to that if you think about it. You've only to picture yourself tackling a naked dude, or gal, in view of dozens, if not hundreds, of on-lookers. And then what? Do you normally carry around a casual-wear wardrobe in the trunk of your car? Note: We did carry blankets in the trunks of our patrol units, though not specifically for the purpose of clothing the naked. May I also direct your attention to the question of why, when carefully considered, you would wish to handle a sweaty, naked stranger when you have no idea where he/she has been? And though Hollywood would have it otherwise, naked folk are not always attractive--at least to others. They often find themselves quite lovely, hence the paucity of clothing. In one long-running affair, we had a senior citizen who felt his nakedness on the beach, or while swimming, was something no reasonable person could object to. He was no Jack Lalane, nor was he destined for a leading role in adult cinema. Oddly, many beachgoers did object, especially small-minded mothers and fathers with young children. As I once pointed out to him, "This is not France, buddy."

In another instance, when responding to a complaint of a noisy party in the wee hours, we were confronted with an array of naked suspects. It appeared that an all-female pool party was in progress, sans swim-wear. After a lengthy surveillance to ensure that no actual crime was in progress, we revealed our presence and quickly restored order--one of the less painful encounters of the naked sort, that I had so far endured. Caution rookie officer: this was an exception, not the norm for the naked encounter! Most will make you cry out, "Oh dear God, no! My eyes...my eyes!" At the very least, you can expect to question the wisdom of your last meal.

The aforementioned blanket may, in fact, be your best defense against the naked suspect. Here is a technique you may wish to remember: Summoned to a domestic, my partner and I were confronted with a fully clothed husband, and a completely naked wife. She was a very angry naked wife. She was also very drunk and drugged-out, and using their bed as a trampoline while hurling all available objects at us, screaming, "Don't touch me!" The EMT's took one look and said, "We'll wait outside with the ambulance." My partner and I looked at one another and shared a single thought--blanket!

With panther-like grace, he leapt onto the still-quaking bed, seizing her hand in a reverse-wrist take-down and bringing her face-down onto the mattress. There we proceeded to quickly roll her into the top cover like a cocktail sausage. It was not dignified, but it was effective, and resulted in the least amount of handling possible in the circumstances.

Edvard Munch's "The Scream"

Some naked suspects, as you can see from the previous example, want to fight. As the person is clearly not armed in most cases, the option of deadly force is rendered moot. Pepper spray is not, however. A naked guy who feels like his face is on fire should rank highly among things you don't want to experience in this, or any other, lifetime. Picture Edvard Munch's "The Scream," (helpfully provided) and you have some idea of the result. Yet, the naked perp has even more to fear from the officer who's aim has been thrown off by his assault. Should the pepper spray find other exposed areas, the suspect may feel he has been transported to a realm far beyond the understanding of mortal man, a place reserved exclusively for those condemned to the seventh ring of hell; the final stop for the violent. There, his previous understanding of agony will become transcendental, achieving a kind of satanic ecstasy. Do not envy him this knowledge.

So there you have it, dear readers--a smattering of knowledge and ideas on handling the naked suspect--ideas and knowledge that I pray you never have to use, or have used on you. Nakedness is a wonderful thing if you're centerfold material, or still south of three years old, but for the vast majority of us clothing remains the most appropriate option. Take it from someone who's seen far more than he ever wanted to, a clothed world is a prettier world. So until next time--keep your pants on and your hands to yourself. Still good advice in an uncertain world.

17 August 2014

After the shooting of young Michael Brown in a small Missouri municipality, I thought the 150 or so assembled police looked more like a scene from protests in the Middle East than what we like to think of as America. As I was pondered writing my column, I noticed a flood of other commentators thought much the same thing.

A fifty-year-old article lamented the emerging police use of the word ‘civilians’ instead of ‘citizens’. This phrasing, said the writer, not merely positions the police apart from the public, but it sets them above the people like shepherds and sheep. The article predicted the concept of serving the citizens would become lost in this new order.

Adding to this perception is the long-standing “1033 Program” by the Department of Defense, which offers military gear to police in even the smallest communities for pennies on the dollar. Tiny police departments can purchase military helicopters, armored personnel carriers, combat assault gear, mine-resistant vehicles and even tanks. This program has become a concern of both liberal and conservative thinkers. (As usual, I distinguish between liberal and conservative, and left and right, which are not synonymous.)

Ferguson, Missouri

Much has been made of this small city’s lack of professionalism. Ferguson’s population as of the last census is 21,000 and diminishing. But in its decline, political and police presence has grown. While it's true its very white police department arrests twice as many minorities as it does whites, that’s in line with the town’s racial mix. A community sore spot is that only 5% of the police community is black and none are in positions of any real authority.

And police there have stepped over the line before. After a suspect in a savage take-down some time back turned out to be innocent, police retaliated. They charged the man with destruction of property for splattering blood from his injuries on their uniforms. Officers in Ferguson don’t appear to be the brightest loci on the thin blue line.

Large cities have at least two advantages small towns and cities don’t. For one thing, sizable cities can provide professional training. They may have their own academies and for officers, they may have the option to send candidates to degree-offering police institutes. Secondly, major metropolitan areas try to weed out bad apples, gung-ho head cases unsuitable for a profession that requires not only strength, but restraint. Small towns have less of a labor pool– and gene pool– to work with.

Side of the Angels

Here at SleuthSayers, we like to think cops are on the side of the Truth, Justice, and the American way of life. Of those who aren’t, we aren’t shy about speaking up once we know the facts. The facts in Ferguson aren’t particularly auspicious.

It looks like plenty of blame can be passed around. There’s no excuse for vandalizing and looting one’s neighbors, especially small business owners trying to eke out a living in a crumbling downtown. Even if they manage to afford insurance, it won’t fully cover damage and the months they’ll be out of business, possibly begging to become stockers in Walmart. And for what?

Looters aren’t big on reading Consumer Reports. A month from now they’ll be begging some undercover cop to buy a bagful of pink Chinese-made THC Pomposity IV cell phones that earned a meager 1½ stars in Gizmodo.

But terrible political decisions and poor policing make things worse. Here at SleuthSayers corporate headquarters, we’re begging Chief David Dean and Agent Lawton to come out of retirement and kick butt.

What we think we know

A week ago on the 9th of August, a police officer shoots and kills an unarmed 18-year-old boy with his hands raised. The young man has never been in trouble before and is enrolled in technical school to advance his education. Likewise, the officer has never previously been brought up on disciplinary charges.

After shooting, the officer, according to witnesses, does not take the pulse of the victim nor does he inform his superiors of a fatal shooting. Instead, he removes himself and his car from the scene, potentially breaking the chain of any potential evidence on the officer or the vehicle, which in this case may prove important.

Commanding officers learn about the shooting not from officers at the scene but, like the public, from television news.

The community initially responds with peaceful protests, but as the police department refuses to answer questions, both sides overreact. Vandals loot and damage property and 150 riot police in military gear shock the nation and the world with a military invasion reminiscent of dictatorial crackdowns.

Within days, Governor Jay Nixon calls a state of emergency, which locals refer to as ‘martial law.’ Adding to the atmosphere of authoritarian abuse in support of Ferguson cops who refuse to wear name tags, Missouri lawmakers rush a bill to the floor of the legislature that would shield the names of officers involved in any shooting from public knowledge. If that passes, a rogue cop could be involved in a dozen shootings and the public would never know.

The Police Department, and particularly its police chief, appear to be utterly tone deaf. When the President offers condolences to the family of the victim, town officials ask where are the condolences for them. Eventually Anonymous gets involved, bless their anarchistic little souls.

After out-of-control cops are caught on camera screaming “Bring it on! Bring it you ƒ-ing animals,” the Chief of Police announces he is not interested in talking with community leaders and praises his men for their “incredible restraint,” prompting a commentator to ask, “What does lack of restraint look like?”

Up to this point, my attention shifted from the increased militarization of police departments to question how poorly the situation was being managed. Hardline authoritarianism is rarely the best solution.

Governor Jay Nixon finally relieves local police of authority and orders the Missouri State Patrol to take over.

When the state police arrive, the atmosphere immediately changes. The community welcomes them,
some even hug the troopers. The mayor of Ferguson
reportedly says he feels safer with their presence.

In defiance of Department of Justice requests not to further inflame the community, after relieved of command, this embattled Chief of Police– without informing the state police who've just replaced him– holds a press conference to announce that young Michael Brown has now surfaced as an after-the-fact suspect in a theft of… (I can’t believe I’m writing this) … a package of cigars.

Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson sharply criticizes Ferguson's Police Chief Thomas Jackson's unilateral press conference about the stolen cigars. This breath of fresh air only enhances the community's respect for Captain Johnson's professionalism contrasted with the self-serving broadsides by the local police chief.

The cigar evidence is somewhat tenuous but, whether or not true, the chief's proclamation smacks of a specious and insensitive smears. The police chief himself acknowledges the two incidents are unrelated, that the officer involved in the shooting was unaware of the cigar store theft.

State police vow not to let that accusation cloud the greater issues at hand. These two men epitomize the right and the wrong way to handle community policing. Ferguson’s “civilians” may have found their Virgil Tibbs in the person of Captain Ron Johnson.

27 May 2014

Now that's it been a few years since my retirement (two--though I can hardly believe it), I thought I might pen a few words on my time as a chief of police. The reason for this is that I've come to understand over the years that very few people know what a chief of police actually does. Whenever I encounter them in fiction they are either chomping on a stogie and bellowing for some hard-working officer's badge, or personally handling crime scenes and investigations as if they have no hard-working officers at all. Like many stereotypes, there is some truth to these examples, but only some.

I have bellowed on the rare occasion, though it was sans cigar. And yes, I have personally attended crime scenes, but not to usurp the duties of those assigned to the case. Whenever I found issues that needed addressing, I mostly did so with the supervisor on scene, and in private. I may have raised my voice on a few of those occasions, but it was probably to be heard over the screams of some guilty person wanting to confess in the next room. As for commandeering investigations, I had enough to do without micro-managing detectives, though I did receive updates on particular cases whenever I asked for them. Occasionally, I was guilty of suggesting different lines of inquiry, or investigative tactics. This was not just my prerogative as chief, but sometimes useful. After all, they were in the thick of it, while I had the luxury of standing back a bit and seeing it fresh. But the detectives and officers solved the cases, not me.

As chief I had six main duties:

First amongst them was simply to lead; set an example and establish standards for performance and acceptable behavior--policy making. The buck stops with the chief. He sees to it that his officers receive credit for work well done, and he takes the heat when his department drops the ball.

Second would be the budget. Without money being applied wisely and well, operations and effectiveness begin to suffer. I never once went over budget. It can be done.

Third is personnel. As chief, I had the final say in hiring...and sadly, sometimes firing. I signed off on the performance evaluations of sergeants and above in my department. I also had the final say on promotion to the next higher rank. The down side to this, of course, was the disappointment, and sometimes resentment, felt by those not selected. It could be keen and heartfelt.

Liaison. As the chief you become the public face of the department. You get to attend a lot functions and host a number, as well. You deal with many, many people. In my case, I answered to a mayor who was also the director of public safety. But he was only one of many masters: The county prosecutor is the chief law enforcement officer at the county level in New Jersey, and so was in my chain of command when it came to criminal law, and search and seizure issues. The borough council expected my attendance at every meeting and got it. They controlled the purse strings and crafted ordinances and it was my duty to advise them when it pertained to public safety and order. Several citizens groups also asked for and received my time. In addition, I worked cheek by jowl with the fire chief, the rescue squad captain, the beach patrol, public works manager (a very useful person when it comes to major storms, flooding, blizzards, etc...), and the director of emergency management at both the municipal and county levels. I was also a member of the county police chiefs association and attended their monthly meetings, as well. These were just the ones I dealt with on a regular basis...there were others.

Discipline: It was also my duty to oversee the disciplinary process and internal affairs investigations. If you want to know what stress feels like, just picture yourself telling someone you've known for decades, and personally like, that you're suspending them from duty and taking a big chunk of their pay for a month. And don't forget to remind them that they will no longer be eligible for promotion. Oh, by the way, my wife wants to know if your wife is available to pitch in at the school Halloween party next week? Get the picture? Sometimes IA's can result in dismissals and even criminal charges. It's not for the faint of heart, trust me, but it is terribly important to the health and integrity of the department. Good officers (the vast majority) want bad officers (a tiny minority, thank God) gone. Their jobs are hard enough without them.

Finally, a category that I'll simply dub "Wearing the Hat." Whenever anything big goes wrong, or when the bad has temporarily overcome the good, you show up. It can be a major fire scene, a child's drowning, a toxic waste incident, catastrophic weather event, or civil unrest. You stop what you're doing, whether it's vacation, dinner with friends, or your wedding anniversary; put on your chief hat (sometimes only figuratively) and go to the scene. Though in many cases, there is nothing more to be done than what is being done--you still go. Why? Because citizens are reassured when the head honcho arrives, and the officers try a little harder when they know you care enough to be there. There's no down side to it. The opposite is true for the absentee chief. Sometimes, there are things that can be done, or usually, facilitated by the chief, but I'll save that for another post.

As for the resolute, square-jawed person pictured above, he has left the theatre. I am now long-haired and sporting a scruffy goatee. Occasionally people drop loose change in my coffee cup. I don't know why.

03 February 2013

If you don't know the acronym UAV, you're so out of date! Predator
drones and the overhead gadgets police use to spy on your backyard
barbecue are called UAVs– unmanned ariel vehicles– UAV, for short.

Those drones we've read about in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq? They
were developed for use in combat territories, not against our own
citizens. But once out of the bag, did anyone seriously expect they
wouldn't be deployed here at home?

I'm torn, partly from techno-geek attraction, partly because I don't
like putting soldiers in harm's way, but partly because I don't like
the idea of killing from the heavens. But now we face another factor–
unarmed drones are being deployed against American citizens. Not
only can they violate your air space, they can violate your personal
space.

Since 9/11, civil liberties have been pouring down the rathole of
'homeland security', most notably from the Orwellian-named US PATRIOT
Acts I and II. They've been stripping basic rights when you weren't
looking and now we have one more way to spy– against ourselves. Wasn't
this what we were taught was so evil about other governments?

That's not to say I don't think domestic drones can have a positive
purpose, but without well defined rules, expect them to be misused and
abused. Cases have already surfaced of drones spying on ordinary
citizens going about their own business on their own property.

The Little Plane that Couldn't

Like boys with the latest R/C plane, our local law enforcement is
delighted with their new toy. While issuing solemn assurances to the
press they won't use drones to observe security precautions of, say,
Mrs. Trudy Boomdacious tanning by her pool at Nº 31 Sunkist
Lane, they can hardly contain themselves until they can go out and
play. Hey, I can't blame them.

But, as we learn from time to time, high technology is beyond some
officials. From our Texas reader Vicki comes this article by Jim Hightower
about Montgomery County's new flying gadget. When showing it off, it
seems
the sheriff dragged out all his goodies including a Bearcat troop
transport with full swat team. It looked great, but unfortunately, the
sheriff's department hasn't learned how to drive… or at least fly.

The drone that grew out of R/C toys has itself become a toy. On Amazon, people like me of twisted mind and
sense of humor have been piling on the review comments. Warning: I said twisted,
for example:

"At last! A Child Predator!"

"With my son's birthday fast approaching, I simply couldn't fathom what
to get him. Last year we had purchased for him the Home Waterboarding
Kit and buying him the same present two years in a row just seemed
wrong...fortunately I found this! I love to watch the maniacal gleam in
his eye as he imagines seas of Pakistani women and children before him
and screams 'Death from above!'. It reminds me of all the joy I got
from the My Lai Massacre playset I had as a child. Shock and awe!"

"(My son) just loves flying his drone around our house, dropping
Hellfire missiles on Scruffy, our dog. He kept saying that Scruffy was
a terror suspect and needed to be taken out. I asked him if Scruffy
should get a trial first, and he quoted Lindsay Graham, Senator:
"Scruffy, you don't get a trial!" I was so proud. I think I'll buy him
some video games that promote martial law for Christmas."

"I just have to say that the educational value of this toy is GREAT. I
just tell my son: This is what the West is using to kill the Rest. We
fly these wonderful planes carrying bombs and we drop them on people we
sort of think are terrorists and other people…"

"Not very educational, as the software is point-and-click, and the
targets' death screams all sound the same. Not durable either, since
they tend to crash between smoking, charred corpses."

"This is the best toy ever. Finally, I can pretend that I'm a winner of
the Nobel Peace Prize!"